


Signs

by lulahbelle



Category: The Eagle | The Eagle of the Ninth (2011)
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-09-06
Updated: 2013-09-06
Packaged: 2017-12-25 19:40:53
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,452
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/956885
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lulahbelle/pseuds/lulahbelle
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>They need to rest.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Signs

**Author's Note:**

> -Aplogies for the awful summary, my brain isn't working today.  
> -Set at some point after they flee The Seal People but before the final battle.  
> -Written for the fourth round of the FanMedia Challenge for the birdcage and wax tablet photo prompts.  
> -Written in such a rush whilst I was somewhat catatonic from lack of sleep so hopefully it still makes the slightest sense when I read it over tomorrow.

They push the horses to gallop as fast as their sinews will allow, running until they cannot see their pursuers, then on still.

It is difficult for Esca, who needs to sleep more than he has anything his whole life, his heart beating in a broken rhythm of fibrous flares and hollowing shallows, every part of him aching.

Impossible still for he knows that however hard it becomes for him it is worse for Marcus.

Marcus had suffered intensely at the Seal village. He was worked hard and his tunic, ripped, was not replaced, leaving his body exposed to the elements most of the day, in the most raw and bitter cold. He was whipped and beaten, brutalised really, in the name of all the bad Rome had done to these people, then consigned to suffer it without the assurance of Esca's loyalty to keep his spirits up.

Esca knows it has destroyed him, knows he will need to rest sooner rather than later.

Sure enough the moment they slow to pass through a vista of heights and deep gaping drops, Esca sees that though the horse went on strong and powerful Marcus atop it, once so large and capable, is visibly softening, his body losing the tension required to stay in the saddle, jolting about disturbingly free and disinterested.

Desperate to make as much ground as they possibly can Esca tries to ignore it but the concern in his heart quickly overcomes him.

"Marcus, stop!"

Marcus does not at first, just looks to him, at his side, slowly, as if even this small motion might make him unsteady. Hiis eyes are faded, his face slack with exhaustion and clearly vulnerable he gives his will over to Esca, straightening, his hands pulling the horse to a halt.

"You need to sleep." Esca commands

It has been long since the time when either side respected Esca's inferior status so Marcus can not just disregard what he says.

He sighs, hard and heavy but dismounts, not so much dragging himself off the horse as slumping down. When on his feet, weariness visibly pulls down on every limb like a phantom.

Esca gets off and begins to lead his horse to where he thinks it might be safest for them to rest, full in the knowledge that he will barely feel relaxed when he climbs on it again and that when he did climb they would still be too many miles away from the safety of the Wall.

Panic covers him over.

Following him, leading his horse to the same indent in the rockface, Marcus grips his arm and when he turns, fixes a look of intensity on his face.

"I'm sorry Esca," he says, ashamed.

Esca strokes his arm listlessly, without the vigour for the comfort he wants to give and mumbles as he moves to their packs, "You need it."

"We will make up for it. When I am awake and we take on again, I will ride harder and faster," Marcus says, and there is something awake in his voice. Arrogance. He sounds like he had arguing with his Uncle the night he had decided they would come here, as if every difficult, treachorous thing were so easy for him.

Esca sees he has learnt nothing of hard truths, or reason, or appreciation of reality from his humiliation. That he is utterly unaware just how exhausted he is and how precarious their situation became with each second. An optimist to the last.

Esca frowns, "You should sleep," he repeats.

There comes the ack ack of birds overhead. Esca is too numbed to look but Marcus does, up at the sky, white and hard above them.

Marcus read a lot into the behaviour of birds, Esca noticed, it seemed most Romans did.

Esca carries on, dragging apart their hurriedly stolen and packed reserves for a cloak they aren't already wearing, or some fabric, just something that Marcus can build some warmth beneath. As he does, his muscles burning with every movement, he is hit by a memory that gives him an acute note of happiness in his heart.

One dusk, back at the villa in Calleva, when he was newly a slave, intrigued by his master and simultaneously invisible to him, he had watched Marcus, on the verandah, looking upwards like he was now, mouth agape, as dark starlings swarmed the skies in their thousands. This he did rapt for a long while, then he looked down and scribbled something on a wax tablet in his lap.

It was peculiarly endearing, the first sign of life or habit that Esca had caught in Marcus who up until that point was little more than his inner frustration and pain, everything else about him blanched away.

Eventually when Esca settles the scrappy cloak, wishing for Marcus to seat underneath it, but aware that he will not until the birds have gone he looks up for himself.

Two noisy, birds, glide through the air, scrubby brown or as far as one can tell in the dismally dim daylight, their wings collosal, spanning larger than any bird Esca has ever seen

Aware that his attention is now shared Marcus says, "Eagles."

Esca smirks, he had thought they were, and well now he understands why Marcus looks so intently.

They have come this far looking for an Eagle standard, a golden Eagle of the military, crafted because these birds are so very special in Roman society.

He wonders what these actual eagles high above them meant in Marcus' mind? Did they herald an appreciation from his Gods for what he had done by rescuing the Eagle standard? Were they some promise of protection for him on returning it?

"I did not know they had eagles here," Marcus says, his voice barely a whisper, "Look at them, soaring, untouchable." The energy it gives him to see it is clear in his stance and Esca smiles proper for that, something of his own vitality returning to him.

"A sign you will get your standard back to Rome?" Esca asks.

Marcus shakes his head, "It is you and I, a sign that you and I will make it safe together." He says, turning to Esca.

Esca looks back at him and smiles mildly, "So I am an eagle now?"

Marcus nods sure.

"Other Romans would disagree you know." Esca says, for he knows that Eagles are one of the highest echelons of animal life to Romans, in fact most Romans if it came to it would sooner kill slave than Eagle.

Marcus just shrugs his shoulders.

Esca nearly smiles but at the same time sighs a little impatient that Marcus is not asleep already and sits himself, beside the cloak he has for Marcus, against a rock.

Marcus joins him, finally, his eyes still upward then he glances at Esca who had slumped down meaning him to settle against him and as Esca wishes he would just rest he begins to speak instead, "I thought I was dead, really, I could not see any reason why you would save me. There was no reason, but for your honour, and that of your people that lives in you."

That Esca has his own reasons for being unable to see Marcus dead that are not quite as noble as his pledge but far cheaper than that he cannot not say. Let Marcus go on suspecting it was a British trait if it kept him from discovering the truth, that his slave has fallen in love with him, a little while longer.

Esca still had to accept that for himself..

"Look they fly South, toward the Wall, free," Marcus says, his eyes having never stopped following their progress, "You see Esca, we will be safe and gloried, the Gods have decided it will be so."

Marcus looks up to him and smiles and Esca cannot help but smile back. Though he is perhaps arrogant in his presumption of the Gods care in that moment, for a pinpointed second he is also impossibly alive and handsome in his happiness.

Such a beauty that Esca thinks it could almost be a joy to die with him if that is how the fates would go.

Such self sacrifice does not sit well or easy with Esca but sits inside nevertheless, reigning supreme.

"You must rest now we've not got much time."

Marcus cleaves his head closer to Esca's side, but continues to watch the birds until they were out of sight. Then finally, he closes his eyes and says in a whisper, flowing over the sleep soft line of his mouth, "I'm sorry Esca."

Esca strokes his hand and Marcus smiles to himself as he drifts away.


End file.
